The real question is why they wouldn’t use the transporter buffers effectively as backups for away teams. Have an away team member killed? No problem, rematerialize them from the buffer.
Well, Thomas Riker proves you can create duplicates and the doctor’s daughter in Strange New Worlds as well as some other episodes prove that the patterns can be stored in the buffer for extended periods of time.
Here’s the thing: Does Tom Riker actually prove that? That’s the explanation suggested in the episode, but the preponderance of information about the mechanisms of transporter technology, as given both before and after, conflicts with it. But there’s another hypothesis, a simpler one, and one that we know for a fact transporters are capable of, because it’s a recurring element in Star Trek: Thomas Riker is from another universe, brought to the Prime universe by similar means as many of the various visits to and from the Mirror universe.
@taladar@dustojnikhummer Why not just let the crew member stay on the ship and just send dozens of copies of them to the planet to overwhelm any danger with sheer numbers?
Well, it makes sense to me to want to have the away mission in the memory of the crew member you retain long term unless something happened to them on the away mission.
The real question is why they wouldn’t use the transporter buffers effectively as backups for away teams. Have an away team member killed? No problem, rematerialize them from the buffer.
The simplest answer would be because it doesn’t ordinarily work that way.
Well, Thomas Riker proves you can create duplicates and the doctor’s daughter in Strange New Worlds as well as some other episodes prove that the patterns can be stored in the buffer for extended periods of time.
Here’s the thing: Does Tom Riker actually prove that? That’s the explanation suggested in the episode, but the preponderance of information about the mechanisms of transporter technology, as given both before and after, conflicts with it. But there’s another hypothesis, a simpler one, and one that we know for a fact transporters are capable of, because it’s a recurring element in Star Trek: Thomas Riker is from another universe, brought to the Prime universe by similar means as many of the various visits to and from the Mirror universe.
@taladar @dustojnikhummer Why not just let the crew member stay on the ship and just send dozens of copies of them to the planet to overwhelm any danger with sheer numbers?
Well, it makes sense to me to want to have the away mission in the memory of the crew member you retain long term unless something happened to them on the away mission.